


What It Means To Be a Hero

by Nowl



Series: Ereri 365 Project [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 01:21:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3271517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nowl/pseuds/Nowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*Ereri 365 Project Spin-Off*</p><p>When he’s in his costume and watching over the city, sometimes he feels like he forgets who he is. So many people only see him as Mr. Vim, sometimes he feels like he forgets what his own name is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What It Means To Be a Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this took so long '^.^  
> This semester of school just started so I got a little distracted from fixing this up for a while.
> 
> If you happened to have read all of the superhero au pieces from the 365 Project, know that most of them are at least getting tweaked if not totally rewritten to fit into a full length fic since I'm reworking it from the beginning.  
> Which means, new readers won't lose anything by starting here instead of going back to read all those other pieces.  
> That said, the beginning of this chapter will probably sound familiar to old readers so make sure you do read the end if you plan on following this :)
> 
> Enjoy!

**_BOOM!_ **

“Eren!”

Eren’s ears are already ringing from the blast so Armin’s shout in the communicator isn’t helping.

“Get outta there!” the despair in Mikasa’s voice kills Eren as he races out of the way of all the falling rubble.

He dives into the hatch leading to the basement just before a piece of the crumbling roof would’ve landed on him. He rolls for a moment until finally he’s completely still again. “Ow,” Eren grumbles, sitting up.

After he checks to make sure nothing’s broken, he moves to tap his earpiece to tell the others he’s alright. His eyebrows furrow when he realizes it’s gone. “Guys!” he shout toward the ceiling.

“They won’t be able to hear you.”

Eren jerks, realizing he isn’t alone. “Who’s there?”

“You really don’t recognize my voice?”

“Feline?” Eren asks, immediately going on the defensive.

He hears the villain sigh in the dark. “Slow your roll, wonder boy, there’s no way out even if you do arrest me now, and besides,” Eren hears him groan and shift around. “I can’t move much right now anyway.”

Eren looks for the flashlight on his belt and hears Feline gasp, scrambling to turn around but clumsy and slow. “I lost my mask,” he says. “Don’t you dare shine that near my face.”

Eren frowns but continues to look him over from his chest down. “What happened?”

“Why do you care?”

“Because I do.”

He can practically hear Feline rolling his eyes. “Oh please, you just want me alive so you can feel good about putting me in jail.”

Eren frowns, turning the flashlight back off. “It’s not like that.”

“So you won’t put me in jail?”

“It’s what I have to do.”

“Why?”

“Because you broke the law, several times over.”

“Did you ever stop to wonder why?”

Eren scoffs. “You obviously get a kick out of it.”

“No, I don’t,” Feline replies. “Do you assume the same of all people like me? We all do this shit for fun?”

Eren freezes. “Well…”

“I do this because I have to,” the thief growls. “I can’t get work anywhere else so I have to find money somehow.”

“Why can’t you work?”

He’s quiet for a moment. “When I was thirteen I robbed a convenience store. I would’ve been expunged from my record but I also had a history of assault because I used to prostitute for years after that so all the judges around here hated me too much to be rid of any of it when I turned eighteen. No one wants to hire anyone with a criminal record.”

Eren is quiet.

“Feel bad about your stupid “criminal justice” system yet?”

Eren takes a deep breath. “I know it’s not perfect but of all the supervillains out there, most of you guys are too nuts to let stay on the streets. We have to do _something_.”

Feline shifts around a little more, trying to get more comfortable on his bruised leg. “Well,” he says. “I’m not like most supervillains.”

“How’s that? You’ve got powers, you commit mass crimes, you –“

“I’m not _just_ taking care of myself, you know,” he says.

Eren doesn’t really want to know who else he has to take care of, he doesn’t even want to know who he is outside of his villain persona. But the more he thinks about Feline, the more his mind is racing about who he could be. The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks he recognizes that voice.

There’s an orphanage right outside the city that a kindly young man donates to a few times a year, a Levi Ackerman. No one knows anything about him except that he donates around five hundred thousand dollars a year. Eren only met him once, when The Alliance gave him an “everyday hero” award last year. He remembers thinking at the time that his voice was incredible similar to Feline’s.

“What are you doing here anyway?” Eren asks quietly. “The attack on this place was by that bomb guy.”

Feline snorts at the fact that Eren forgot that guys name. “Now you ask? I live here. This basement is where I keep my costume.”

“Wait so –“

“ _Yes_ , dimwit, I’ve been illegally squatting underneath a supermarket.”

“Hm.”

“What?”

Eren gets more comfortable. “I lived in a box in an alley for a few months.”

Feline’s eyebrows furrow. “You? Mr. Vim? The epitome of all things perfect and heroic? You lived in an alley?”

Eren shrugs, looking at his feet. “My parents kicked me out right after my seventeenth birthday.”

“What are you –“

“My dad couldn’t handle living with a superkid,” Eren says. “So he kicked me out and I haven’t seen him or my mom since.”

Feline stares at him. “Wow,” he says.

“So here’s my proposal,” Eren says. “Since I know what it’s like not to have a home any judgment I make about you will be biased anyway, you and I should form a truce, just between the two of us.”

“A truce?” Feline replies skeptically.

“I’m not accountable for anything any other heroes do to you but if the decision comes to me, you get to stay free. On one condition.”

“What condition?”

“I can see your face.”

Eren can hear the barest breath of a chuckle. “That’s quite a condition.”

“You can see mine too.”

He’s silent for a beat. “You’re going to compromise your identity for me?”

“I don’t think you have any reason to tell anyone who I am.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

Eren smirks. “If I’m right about who you really are, I know more than you think.”

Eren peels his mask off and finger combs his hair back into a normal position. “Give me your flashlight,” Feline says.

Eren hands it over and Feline stands on shaky legs, walking across the small space. Eren hears him digging in what sounds like a drawer for something before lighting a match. He lights a few candles sitting on that table and brings them over. Eren smirks when he sees his face, mostly trying to hide how stricken he is that a villain could be _this_ goodlooking. “I knew it,” Eren says. “Levi Ackerman.”

“How do you know my name?”

“You’re the man who donates to the orphanage, we’ve met before. You’ve been giving them most of the money you’ve been stealing.”

“Less than a half of the money I’ve been stealing, actually. I’ve saved most of it.” Levi looks Eren over appraisingly. “You really are just a kid,” he mutters. Eren nods and Levi smirks at him. “What’s your name?” he asks finally, holding out his hand.

“Eren,” he replies, shaking it.

“Well, Eren, I believe this is the beginning a nice, convenient friendship.”

“Vim!” echoes a shout, definitely Mikasa.

Eren pulls his mask back on as quickly as possible. “Get in your civilian clothes and hide your uniform in a bag.”

“Why?” Levi asks.

“I’m getting you out of here.”

“Vim!” Mikasa shouts again.

“Down here!” Eren shouts back.

Levi is in normal clothes quicker than Eren would’ve thought possible, given his injuries he still hasn’t let Eren see.

Levi finds his mask and shoves it in a bag with the rest of his uniform a couple other things. He blows out the candles just as light breaks from the hatch. Mikasa’s face peeks in, and Eren can almost see her relief through her mask. “Are you alright?” she asks.

“We’re fine,” Eren replies.

“We?”

“There’s a civilian down here with me.”

“Do I need to flag down a medic?”

Eren looks at Levi who shakes his head. “No, he’s alright. I just dragged him down here with me so he wouldn’t be crushed.”

Eren loops an arm around Levi’s waist and levitates the two of them out of the hole. Mikasa checks Eren over once they’re back on the ground. “Why didn’t you just lift the debris off the opening?” she asks.

“No one could hear me,” Eren replies. “I didn’t want to knock something over and hurt someone.”

“Right,” she says and glances at Levi. “Do you need medical assistance sir? If not, I’ll have to ask you to leave the scene while we check for more explosives.”

Levi smirks. “Unless you count being smitten by a tough guy like this one,” he says, dramatically latching himself on Eren’s arm.

Eren blinks in confusion. What’s with the sudden show? Eren can tell immediately that Levi’s behavior is getting on Mikasa’s nerves. Levi jots something down on a piece of paper from his bag and folds it. He tucks it into a pouch on Eren’s belt. “Call me, okay babe?”

With that, Levi skips off, swinging his hips as a show for Mikasa.

“Who was that?” Mikasa asks accusingly. “You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

Eren rolls his eyes. “Calm down, Mikasa. I recused him, you know how people get about that.”

She makes a face at him. “C’mon, we have more work to do.”

…

A few hours of cleanup later, Eren and Mikasa finally get back to headquarters to put their civilian clothes back on. Eren checks the note Levi left with him before he does anything else.

_I’ll be waiting on the roof of the library until midnight. If you want to make nice on our truce, since the place I was staying is destroyed now, come find me so I can stay at your apartment until I find a new place to stay – Levi_

Eren showers and changes quickly. He sneaks from the building as quickly as he can, hoping he doesn’t get stopped to chat with someone on his way out. Thankfully, everyone seems busy so he gets out without trouble and starts walking to the library.

He finds it’s always interesting to walk around as a civilian. Being invisible in a crowd for a few minutes is a nice change from all the attention he’s always gotten his entire life. From all the suspicious stares he’d always gotten from his relatives as a kid to all the disdainful ones he always got from his classmates. He needs this time to be no one, he thinks.

When he’s in his costume and watching over the city, sometimes he feels like he forgets who he is. So many people only see him as Mr. Vim, sometimes he feels like he forgets what his own name is. The only person he remembers always calling him by his own name when he was a kid was his mother. Everything else is a cloud of voices saying “nuisance” and “trouble”.

He wonders how many of those people he used to know probably think he’s dead now since he disappeared from home. He wonders if his mother misses him. He only tried to call home once. No one answered and he was afraid to leave a message.

The last thing he remembers of his mom is the fear in her eyes as he left. He can’t remember now who put that fear there but he thinks it must’ve been him. He did shatter the kitchen table, after all. He’s always been stronger than he ever wanted to be.

Eren takes a deep breath and tries to push those thoughts away. He gave up being normal when he met Mikasa. When she brought him to The Alliance he knew there was no turning back.

This is the life he chose; uncertainty and identity confusion included.

As Eren gets closer to the library, he starts looking for an inconspicuous way up. In the alley he finds a rickety ladder so instead of chancing it falling, he flies up to the roof, hoping no one is watching. Levi is sitting on the ventilation unit on the roof, watching the sunset bleed into twilight. “So you did come,” He says, glancing back at Eren.

Eren doesn’t know why, but he feels a flicker of some kind of hope in his heart. Maybe he can find a friend in Levi. Maybe this is the beginning of a relationship where someone isn’t just nice to him because they don’t want him to hurt them. He hopes like hell that _someone_ can see a real person through his powers and his persona as Vim.

“I guess I did,” Eren replies.


End file.
